Human-hating Eco-fascists Want to Send Us Back to the Dark Ages!

May 16, 2015May 16, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

The Fossil Fuel-Free Fantasy: Robert Bryce Hammers Harvard’s Human-Hating Ecofascist Hit Squad

May 16, 2015 by stopthesethings

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Robert Bryce picked the wind power fraud for what it is from the very beginning.

In his 2010 book “Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future” (Public Affairs), Bryce skewered every one of the myths relied upon by the wind industry to peddle its wares; and went on to predict the massive benefits of the US shale gas revolution – in terms of both cheap energy – operating as a boost to a flagging economy – and as a method of reducing CO2 emissions in the electricity sector.

We’ve covered some of his recent writings on US energy policy and the wind power fraud (see our posts here and here and here).

Bryce recently published another cracking book “Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong” (Public Affairs) that loads up on the nonsense that is US energy policy today: we covered a review of Bryce’s latest by the New York Timesin this post.

Robert also gave a brilliant lecture here last year, which is worth revisiting, as the lunatics from Getup! & Co work themselves into an astroturfing eco-frenzy selling (at a handsome mark-up – worth over $1 million, so far) the myth that the world can happily run on millions of giant fans and a lot of ‘luck’ (such as the wind Gods agreeing to blow at a constant 11m/s 24 x 365, say):

Robert Bryce: Want to live in Stone-Age Poverty? Then tie your future to Wind Power

In the post above, Robert lays out the key arguments as to why cheap, reliable sparks are critical to the growth, wealth and development of Nations.

While access to power is something we – in the developed world – smugly take for granted, for the billion or so at the bottom of the development heap it is the ONLY path out of poverty. And for those struggling to escape deprivation and darkness, the answer is most certainly not insanely expensive and unreliable wind power. To the contrary, reliable and affordable power is a guarantee of both wealth and freedom.

Energy policy has been over-run by “green” ideologues who are determined to ensure that the poorest remain that way by wedding the world to the fiction that wind power provides a meaningful answer to growing energy demand, while “solving” the climate change “problem”.

Robert picks up the theme in this piece from the National Review in response to the fantasy that the world could operate, as it does, on the strength of a friendly (occasional) breeze – and goes on to hammer the misanthropy of an intellectually dishonest elite, who would – on the strength of little more than an ideological whim – deprive the poorest on the planet that, which they happily take for granted.

The Environmentalists’ Civil War
National Review
Robert Bryce
17 April 2015

It’s a manifesto smackdown, a fight among the members of the green Left for the intellectual and moral high ground. It’s also a fight that reflects the growing schism within American environmentalism. On one side are the pro-energy, pro-density humanists. They call themselves ecomodernists and are led by the Breakthrough Institute, a centrist, Oakland-based environmental group. On Wednesday, it released what it describes as an “ecomodernist manifesto,” a document that, at root, states the obvious: Economic development is essential for environmental protection.

On the opposite side are the anti-energy, pro-sprawl absolutists. Their views are evident in the ongoing protests this week in Harvard Yard. A group called Divest Harvard is pushing the Harvard Corporation, the school’s governing body, to divest the school’s $36 billion endowment of any investments in companies that provide coal, oil, and natural gas to consumers. This group’s manifesto, issued in February, demonizes energy use.

The absolutists like to use the squishy term “climate justice.” They believe that the threat of climate change trumps all other concerns, including the welfare of people living in energy poverty. For the absolutists, the only path to salvation is through the exclusive use of renewable energy. And in that regard, Divest Harvard falls smack in the middle of mainstream liberal-left environmentalism in America.

The anti-energy, pro-sprawl absolutists — a designation that, in my view, fits the Sierra Club, 350.org, Greenpeace, and Natural Resources Defense Council — are anti-nuclear, anti-hydrocarbon, and anti-hydraulic fracturing. They routinely peddle slogans such as “fossil-free” and continually claim that we can rely solely on increased efficiency and renewable energy.

They push these claims despite overwhelming evidence from Germany and Japan that shuttering nuclear power plants and relying too much on renewables results in higher electricity prices and decreased reliability. (For more on that, see this April 13 Reuters piece about the potential shuttering of dozens of conventional power plants in Germany.)

The absolutists are anti-energy. In a Divest Harvard video posted on YouTube, the group stated that its goal is to “stigmatize the fossil fuel industry.” The absolutists try to do that all the time. Just last week, the Sierra Club announced the expansion of its “beyond coal” campaign.

The group’s backers — who include former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg — have pledged some $60 million in funding for the effort, which aims to shutter half of U.S. coal plants by 2017.

Celebrating the fundraising effort, the group’s executive director, Michael Brune, declared, “Dirty, outdated, deadly coal is a thing of the past.” Never mind that coal remains the world’s fastest-growing source of energy and that it has been the fastest-growing source of energy since 1973. Never mind that countries from Germany to Bangladesh are building hundreds of gigawatts of coal-fired power plants. Never mind that the United States has more coal reserves than any other country does. Coal must be stigmatized.

Based on the logic that the Sierra Club and Divest Harvard put forward, companies such as Coal India Limited must be stigmatized. Coal India is deemed untouchable because it provides coal to generation stations in a poverty-stricken country that gets about 70 percent of its power from coal. Coal India provides fuel to 82 of India’s 86 coal-fired generators. Therefore, it must be stigmatized. Never mind that more than 300 million Indians — a group approximately equal to the entire population of the United States — lack access to electricity.

To be clear, the absolutists at Divest Harvard don’t mention Coal India in their manifesto. But the open letter published in mid-February and signed by about three dozen Harvard graduates — including 350.org founder Bill McKibben, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., author Susan Faludi, former U.S. senator Tim Wirth, and actress Natalie Portman — condemns investment in what it calls the “dirtiest energy companies on the planet.”

The manifesto lays bare Divest Harvard’s anti-human outlook. They write: “Global warming is the greatest threat the planet faces . . . . This issue demands we all make changes to business as usual — especially those of us who have prospered from the systems driving climate change.”

Who might be included in “those of us who have prospered” from the use of coal, oil, and natural gas — fuels that, when burned, emit carbon dioxide and therefore contribute to climate change? My back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that it would include nearly every person in America, (approximately 319 million), as well as anyone who has ever made money by taking a car, bus, plane, or ship to work, baked a loaf of bread, or delivered a piano. In all, the number of who’ve prospered thanks to the availability of hydrocarbons probably totals 3 billion to 4 billion people.

Despite energy poverty that afflicts hundreds of millions of people in countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia (all of which, by the way, are in the process of adding huge amounts of new coal-fired generation capacity), the absolutists equate energy use with evil.

In their February manifesto, the absolutists claim that selling the Harvard’s investments in hydrocarbon producers will make the school “accountable for the future” and that the school should divest because “Harvard eventually divested from apartheid, from tobacco, and from the genocide in Darfur.”

By comparing energy producers (and therefore, energy consumers) with the people involved in racist repression and mass murder, the absolutists are, in effect, saying that consumers who use gasoline, diesel fuel, natural gas, or coal-fired electricity are as morally bankrupt as those who aided racial repression and mass murder.

This is nonsense on stilts. Even if the divestment push at Harvard were to succeed — and dozens of other institutions were to follow suit — it wouldn’t halt the consumption of any hydrocarbons. It won’t give us a “safe climate.” The investments that Harvard sells will simply be purchased by another entity.

To argue that divestment of companies that produce coal, oil, and natural gas will make a difference on climate change is akin to arguing that if investors sell their equity in a McDonalds or Burger King franchise, hungry people will quit buying cheeseburgers.

The divestment movement is predicated on the fantastical assumption that we humans can, as the organizers of 350.org have repeatedly claimed, live “fossil free.” And they continue to claim, wrongly, that the world can be run on nothing more than solar panels and wind turbines.

The absolutists claim that we only need to “do the math” to understand their position. Okay. Let’s do some math. And by doing so, we will show how the absolutists favor sprawl and therefore the destruction of the very environment they say they want to protect.

To make it easy on the Harvard grads, let’s focus solely on Massachusetts, which consumes about 56 terawatt-hours (1 terawatt-hour is equal to 1 trillion watt-hours) of electricity per year. To create that much electricity solely with wind energy would require, in rough terms, about 31 gigawatts of wind-energy capacity. (The annual productivity of wind energy, based on the BP Statistical Review 2014, is 1.8 terawatt-hours per gigawatt of capacity. That’s the average over nine years, from 2005 to 2013.)

The power density of wind energy — as I have repeatedly proven — is 1 watt per square meter. Therefore, the land area needed to produce that much renewable electricity would total about 31 billion square meters or 31,000 square kilometers, which is about 12,000 square miles. Put another way, just to meet electricity demand in Massachusetts with wind energy would require an area larger than the state itself, which, including water area, covers about 27,000 square kilometers, or 10,500 square miles.

And remember, these calculations ignore the essentiality of oil for transportation and home heating. The latter is important because about 30 percent of all Bay State residents rely on heating oil to stay warm in the winter. Staying warm can be a challenge in the Boston area, which got about 100 inches of snow this past winter.

The absolutist, pro-sprawl outlook touted by McKibben and his allies provides a stark contrast to the pro-human outlook the ecomodernists support. Perhaps the key line of their manifesto is in the concluding sentence, which says they want to “achieve universal human dignity on a biodiverse and thriving planet.”

Toward that end, the 18 signers of the manifesto — a group that includes Breakthrough Institute founders Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, as well as Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand, and the University of Tasmania’s Barry Brook — support increased energy use. They note, rightly: “Climate change and other global ecological challenges are not the most important immediate concerns for the majority of the world’s people. Nor should they be. A new coal-fired power station in Bangladesh may bring air pollution and rising carbon dioxide emissions but will also save lives.” That’s it exactly.

While the absolutists want one of America’s most prestigious universities to sell some of its investments — with the only goal being to stigmatize the world’s biggest and single most important business — the ecomodernists are arguing not only that greater global energy consumption is inevitable, but that it’s good, that more energy use will allow more people in the developing world to live fuller, freer lives.

As part of that, they are adding, rightly, that nuclear energy must be a central element of climate policy if we are going to reduce the rate of growth in global carbon dioxide emissions. The ecomodernists oppose sprawl. Their manifesto talks of the need to intensify “many human activities — particularly farming, energy extraction, forestry, and settlement — so that they use less land and interfere less with the natural world.”

Increasing density, they continue, “is the key to decoupling human development from environmental impacts.” The absolutists don’t have any credible plans for producing the vast quantities of energy the world demands. They not only ignore energy poverty in the developing world, they also have worked to block the American government from providing any financing for coal-fired power plants in developing counties. (See my 2013 piece on that issue here.)

At the same time, they promote landscape and wildlife-destroying schemes such as wind energy that will result in unprecedented sprawl. That’s the very same energy sprawl that property owners all over the world are objecting to. (Among the property owners who don’t want wind turbines near their property, of course, is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Divest Harvard proponent vociferously objected to the Cape Wind project, the now-dead proposal to install more than a hundred 440-foot-high turbines in Nantucket Sound, near the Kennedy family’s vacation compound at Hyannisport.)

The manifesto smackdown exposes our need to rethink what it means to be an environmentalist. The ecomodernists have laid out a thoughtful position paper that dares the absolutists to go beyond sloganeering and stigmatizing. I will be pleasantly surprised if Divest Harvard, 350.org, Sierra Club, and their allies respond to that dare. But I’m not holding my breath.

Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His most recent book is Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong.
National Review

A solid analysis from go to whoa, as we’ve come to expect from Robert. What he does better than most is to throw the spotlight on the malign aspects of an ideology that has all the hallmarks of an insidious, quasi-religious cult.

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The concept that one can – by ticking a box, or signing up to an outfit like GetUp! etc – become “fossil-fuel-free”, is up there with belief in the tooth fairy or Father Christmas; which requires an intellect so soggy that it hasn’t got the ability to connect the creation and production of things – like the steel and aluminium in their hipster, urban commuting devices – with the fuel and resources incorporated in them, or needed to make them.

It’s a point well made by Ian Plimer in his book, Not For Greens, available from News Weekly Books (see our post here).

The worship of wind power also runs into the same paradox, for the “faithful”.

Far from being an antidote to the fossil fuels they dread, and are at pains to publicly eschew, fossil fuel producers are delighted with the opportunity to make wild profits, on the back of a meaningless power source, that requires 100% of its capacity to be backed up 100% of the time with conventional generation sources, which, in practical effect, means coal, gas and diesel:

Why Coal Miners, Oil and Gas Producers Simply Love Wind Power

What people like Plimer and Bryce do so well is throw a little reality back at the fantasists, who are happy to live with every modern convenience, product and device made possible by oil, gas and coal. But, in the same breath, are quick to deny the lifestyle, they take for granted, to anyone, anywhere in the world with the simple human ambition to live just a little better than their parents did. “Green” hypocrisy is hardly a crime (more a symptom of intellectual infancy, really); but when its energy impoverished victims run into the millions, it gets mighty close; and becomes even harder to defend, on any level.

Advice that Inspired me, To Fight The Windpushers, With Everything I Have In me!

May 14, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

How to Fight the Big Wind Onslaught

Calvin Luther Martin, January 2009

Yesterday I turned 61. I’ve been fighting the wind bastards well over 4 years. Four years devoted to almost nothing else. Put a big book on hold with Yale Univ. Press for this. In those years I’ve answered thousands of emails from people around the world. Japan. Cyprus. Norway. Sweden. Czechoslovakia. Australia. New Zealand. Ireland. England. Wales. France. Canada. Many states of the Union. On and on.

In those years (which included years of fighting the wind thugs in three or four different iterations) in my backyard and beating the sons of bitches (at least for now), I’ve learned some valuable lessons. I oughta write a book. Consider this the first installment of that book.

I am no longer an academic. I’m a writer. Writers write to convey something in the most appropriate language for the matter at hand. For wind energy the most appropriate language is profanity, vulgarity, and obscenity. The louder the better. These are not honorable people. Wind energy is not an honorable enterprise.

Big Wind is obscene, profane, and vulgar.

Okay, rough draft of book:

Chapter 1. Courtesy doesn’t work.

Chapter 2. Questions don’t work. Stop going to meetings and asking questions. Problem is, you’re asking questions of the wind sharks. This is akin to the hens asking questions of the foxes who are about to pounce on the henhouse. Wake up!

Second, stop expressing your concerns at meetings. Weenie word. Your biggest rhetorical enemy in this fight is this word, concerns. Drop it! The media (see below) loves to describe you as concerned. (“The hens expressed some concerns to the foxes.”) Screw concerned and start getting angry and defiant. And stop asking the windies questions and start informing them of the fact they and their goddam monster turbines and substations are not welcome in town. This is the your conversation with them: Get the hell out of Dodge!

Chapter 3. Real evidence doesn’t work. The wind sharks fabricate their own, using whorish little companies to perform noise measurements and do environmental impact studies, including bird and bat studies. Companies often consisting of four guys with sweaty balls and BS degrees from nondescript bullshit state colleges, from which they graduated three years ago. But they’ve got a website and stationery and PO Box — and they’re rarin’ to get those permits for Big Wind. Give me a break!

Chapter 4. Meetings with state senators, governors, premiers, department heads, county commissioners, the media, other various and assorted lawmakers — don’t work.

Chapter 5. Following the rules at public meetings does not work. The meetings are (a) a charade, (b) a farce, (c) a hoax, and (d) altogether a mockery of public participation. The fix has already been made, the deal bought and paid for. Refuse to be silenced by Robert’s Rules of Order. Screw Roberts! Major Henry Martyn Robert never had to abandon his home to a wind turbine!

Chapter 6. Lawsuits don’t work. They might appear to initially, but ultimately, at some level of court, they fail. With very few exceptions, lawyers and lawsuits are a waste of time, money, and mostly strategic advantage. You’re barking up the wrong tree with a lawyer. Your town board and county commissioners are poised and prepared for you to take them on legally; they’ve got attorneys on retainer and they can swallow you whole in the byzantine legal process.

Don’t bother going down that road. Dr. Martin Luther King (see below) didn’t use lawyers. Neither did Gandhi, who was a trained lawyer. Wrong strategy. If you think the Big Wind Onslaught is not on the scale of a Gandhi and King, but just a minor issue — think again. I suggest you do some reading on the English Enclosure Movement. Look for parallels. The Big Wind Onslaught is a big deal. Stop imagining otherwise. This from a (retired) professional historian (see attached c.v.).

Chapter 7. Wind energy is bullshit. Nitwits who begin their case by telling the local newspaper, “Well, Gee, we fully support renewable energy, including wind energy, and we feel wind turbines are marvelous so long as they’re placed in the right spot” — nitwits who start off their campaign with this are doomed. Wind energy, folks, is horseshit. From beginning to end. Fairy Godmother economics. Right up there with the Easter Bunny. This is 4.5 years of reading thousands of documents, yes, much of it on the physics and economics of wind energy. (By the way, my BA is in science and I did several years of graduate training in hard core science. Science doesn’t scare me.) Wind energy, when subjected to Physics 101, falls apart. It’s laughable. Buy a textbook in introductory physics. Start reading.

Chapter 8. Wind energy works because of (a) carbon credits (an unspeakable scam), (b) federal and state subsidies of various sorts, (c) a slow bleed from your monthly energy bill (check it out), (d) PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) arrangements with communities, and (e) huge tax write-offs for wind investors, including big Wall Street banks. It does not work because it is economically feasible — it’s not — or because it produces meaningful electricity — it does not. And if I hear that it “gets us off foreign oil” I’m gonna scream. For that statement, you need not a beginning physics text, you need your head examined.

Chapter 9. Wind energy companies are bullshit. I guarantee you, you know virtually nothing about that wind company that’s been schmoozing your town board. You know nothing about their financial records, background, credit, or trustworthiness. Nothing. In fact, you know nothing about 98% of their personnel, including what they like to call the Principals. (You will love the pretentious names they bestow on themselves.) These people just drop out of the sky — like snake oil salesmen in the Old West. No different. They’re carnies, carpet baggers, grifters, and cons. All of ’em. Including more than a few Enron re-treads. Amazing, in fact, how many are from Ireland. (I’m Irish.) To treat these people with respect is hilarious. Like treating the Three Stooges-who-turn-out-to-be-your executioner with respect. One more thing: most of these companies are 200% leveraged (no money of their own).

Chapter 10. Most of the jerks who sign wind leases either (a) don’t live there, or (b) if they do, their property’s big enough they make sure those turbines are next to your house, not theirs, or (c) they’re so stupid and such losers and so desperate for money they’d sell their first-born for several grand a year. Successful, smart farmers don’t sign wind leases. Except for a slight modification. It’s called the Domino Principle. It’s insidious. Consider Farmer Brown. He’s smart, he’s successful. But he’s surrounded by Farmers Jones, Smith, and Martin — all of whom are losers and pikers. Jones, Smith, and Martin have signed on with the windies. Brown realizes he’s gonna be looking at these damn things and listening to them whether he “hosts” them or not. So he turns to Hortense, the wife, “Jeez honey, we might as well have a couple and make some money, too, since we’re gonna have to be dealing with these friggin things anyhow.” Nasty, yes. Remember, it’s called the Domino Principle. Windies play this game every day. It’s their favorite strategy for winning the hearts and minds of the community.

Chapter 11. We need to take a look at Economics 101. This is a long one. I apologize. America (insert any nation here, as you wish) is in a profound recession. Profound in the sense it has exposed a systemic, structural flaw within the nation’s economy. A strong argument can be made that America’s economy has for decades (probably since WWII) run on “bubbles.” Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the “bubble” ratio in the overall economy has grown since WWII.

The most recent bubble, the housing bubble, accounted for a surprisingly large part of the nation’s economy. To wit, people used their homes as piggy banks, and Wall Street rode this bubble (mixing metaphors, but we’ll let it pass).

My point is for you to notice that at the bottom of a bubble is something which appears to have real value. Your house. Or that house you’re thinking of buying over there and which you know will increase dramatically in value, real quick. (Remember, the USA no longer has a gold standard, so gold ain’t it.) There was a whole financial sand castle built on the back of your house. But, alas, the sea inexorably came in and washed away the sand castle (Wall Street, mortgage lenders like Countrywide Financial), and your house has gone back to being worth far less than you dreamed it was. (Or your house is on its way to readjusting to its more realistic value. May not have reached that level yet.)

Now listen. We need another thing that gives the appearance of value. That seems tangible, solid, ubiquitous, and can somehow enter the nation’s financial account, funny numbers, Enron-esque imagination, and bizarre Wall Street lingo. And, on the back of this New Basis of Bubble we will build the Next Big Bubble.

I’m here to strongly suggest that your property value has become, and is becoming, the basis of the Next Big Bubble.

Consider Barbara Ashbee, in rural Ontario. You can read about her plight on the windturbinesyndrome.com website. Barbara’s a realtor, which makes this story even more poignant. Barbara and husband Dennis are just like you and me: our major investment is in our home and property. Notice this: she just had her property value stolen from her. Bam, just like that. Her property, to her, is now nearly worthless. Same with Daniel d’Entremont (Nova Scotia), Gerry Meyer (Wisconsin), Jane and Julian Davis (England), Charlie Porter (Missouri), Cheryl LeClair (New York State), and so on. Hundreds of people? Nope, thousands. Or more.

Now, think: Who just gained from Barbara Ashbee’s loss? The wind developer. Worthless wind power and worthless turbines have now acquired something worthwhile and real, something tangible, something that gives the appearance of value — the value of your property (even though you are not “hosting” turbines) and, even more so, the value of “host” properties.

More than this, wind companies now control the value of whole communities. Churubusco, NY (next door to me), Chateaugay, NY (next door to me), Bellmont, NY (next door to me), Ellenburg, NY (next door to me), Altona, NY (next door to me). All these communities have become (or are becoming) industrial wastelands — in my eyes and yours. But not so for wind developers and their stockholders and the banks that own them: this is now financially controlled and financially-manipulable land. Read those lease contracts.

Even without a contract your property value plunges when turbines go up in your community. Land use has now changed from “lovely rural bucolic I want to live here and raise my kids it’s so quiet and nights are dark and magical we’ve farmed this land for eight generations and I want to pass it on to my kids” to “I can’t stand living here I hate these turbines the noise drives me nuts and the spinning blades are horrible and the whole landscape looks surreal and nobody in his right mind would move here and my kids won’t live here when they grow up and dear God I pray the developer buys me out.”

In Enron and Wall Street economics, the value of your community — a value that has now shifted to Enron-spawned wind companies and Wall Street banker control — is something that can be traded, bought and sold, reassigned, financially speculated in, financially gambled with, sold as hedge funds, investments, preferred stock.

I’ll stop with this, since it gives you the gist of what I believe is happening. I admit I don’t have the details worked out fully, and one can certainly make corrections and additions and refinements to my argument, but I suspect you, dear reader, are creating the basis for the next bubble. The Renewable Energy Bubble (read, Wind Bubble), built on the stolen value of your land and your town’s value.

Anyhow, ponder this and consider that this forms yet another reason to stop being polite and cordial and reasonable with the wind/Wall Street sharks. Wall Street: You don’t believe me that big banks are heavily invested in that cutely-named wind company that’s moved into town? Better look harder, buddy.

Chapter 12. Given the last chapter, why on earth do you think any lawmaker or other government official or agency is going to listen to your pleas about not building wind turbines in your backyard? Are you nuts? Wind energy is the perfect storm, as I keep saying: it’s our solution to Global Warming, The Energy Crisis, Jobs, The Economy, The Recession, Environmentalism, Foreign Oil, General Electric’s Bottom Line, and Fill-in-the-Blank. (Note to Barbara Ashbee: Wind energy is the answer to Ontario Premier McGuinty’s most fervent wish and fantasy. Even Obama, clearly an intelligent man, has embraced Big Wind with the devotion of a Born Againer.)

One of the problems with nukes, by the way, is that they don’t provide a basis for a New Bubble: nuclear plants don’t rob millions of people of the value of their land, which land the wind developers in a weird sense now control (for trading and investment purposes).

I have been paying attention to the feverish activity of little wind companies going around and snapping up “wind leases” even as the bum economy prevents them from building “wind farms,” as yet, on those properties. One company in particular, whom I won’t name, has been working New England and the Midwest (now Minnesota) even as this company, to our eyes, appears to be bankrupt. Hmmm. Interesting.

(Here’s a tip to anyone unscrupulous reading this: Wanna get in on the ground floor of The Next Bubble? Form a bullshit wind energy company and start buying up wind leases which, I believe, also control underground rights. There you get into natural gas and fracking. Fracking? Look it up and be prepared to be horrified. Fracking is now about to move to the Marcellus Shale, NY State and indeed much of the Appalachian region, from the West and Southwest.)

Okay. What works, and the only thing that’s going to work, is . . .

Chapter 13. Civil disobedience. Use it imaginatively, floridly, boisterously, loudly, and as obnoxiously, extravagantly, creatively, and brilliantly as you possibly can. Start this weekend.

Here is exactly what I mean by civil disobedience. Signs, placards, banners, handbills, marches, demonstrations, picketing, shutting down public meetings both large and small and both high falutin’ and low falutin’, shouting matches, getting arrested for refusing to shut up and sit down. As Rosa Parks did, when she sparked the Civil Rights movement: you need to refuse to give up your seat to the wind bastard on the bus. Do this with the wind sharks and your town officers, all the way up to state and federal government.

Here is exactly what I don’t mean by civil disobedience: Breaking the law. Nor am I advocating violence. I detest violence. For me, violence is not only illegal; it’s abhorrent, it’s inelegant, and nothing can be stupider. It accomplishes nothing good. Ever. I say this as a former professor of history. I stand with Gandhi and M.L. King on this matter. My sympathies lie with Quakers, not jihadists.

I believe in working within the system, and the system includes the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

This is all you need. Add in the right to vote, by the way. Working within these parameters, apply what Martin Luther King in his letter from the Birmingham jail called direct action.

“The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation …. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action …. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored …. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”

None of the public agencies and bureaucracies will take seriously any of your marvelous evidence about the follies and dangers of wind energy (including Nina Pierpont’s, or Rick James’s, or Glenn Schleede’s, or God’s for that matter) until — à la Martin Luther King — you demonstrate to them that they are going to have to take your evidence seriously.

The operative word is demonstrate. This is not done by reason or argument or a sense of fairness or justice. Sorry to disillusion you, and sorry to shoot down one of the cornerstones of academia: that “the truth will set you free” and “reason prevails over ignorance.” Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King all knew the vital word in their struggle was demonstrate.

Dr. King had plenty of sociological and economic and constitutional and statutory and even theological evidence in his briefcase — but it was going nowhere until he showed Alabama and the nation and the US Attorney General and Congress: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are all going to take my evidence of racism and Jim Crow and lynching and economic and political harassment and general disfranchisement very seriously, okay? And to drive home my point that you whities are gonna take the evidence seriously, we colored folks are gonna get in your face about it until you take us seriously.”

It’s precisely for this that he wound up in the Birmingham jail.

Let me rephrase. You can have all the Nina Pierponts and Rick James and Glenn Schleedes you want, yet they amount to nothing if you have failed to convince your audience (lawmakers) that they are going to have to take this seriously. This is the role of civil disobedience. Reason, meetings, arguments, fairness, justice: reliance on these will not and does not work. Civil disobedience. King’s “direct action.” Nonviolent tension that’s “so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door” to being listened to. This is the route to follow.

The wind developers and their shills? You will never convince them. They are not your audience. Don’t make the blunder of imagining them to be your audience, and don’t argue with them. Cut them out of the discourse! Don’t rise to them! The people whom you need to impress with your nonviolent tension are not the developers; it’s the lawmakers.

By the way, stop reading wind developer websites. These carpetbaggers are not your audience: I can’t emphasize this enough. It’s like reading the handbills distributed by snake oil salesmen at 19th-century carnivals. Why bother? For entertainment, yes. But for truth, use your brain. As in, “If it smells like a turd and looks like a turd and tastes like a turd, chances are it is.” Likewise, “if it sounds almost too good to be true: it is.”

The media? Simpering assholes who have all gone with the wind. (Don’t you love it when they interview the smilin’ smirkin’ salesman sayin’ “Them turbines, folks — why them turbines is gonna electrify 35,000 American homes” — except nobody mentions it’s only if the wind’s blowing 25-35 mph 24/7, 365 days a year. That’s my all-time favorite line, right after “Don’t you worry ’bout them turbines and noise. No louder than a hummin’ ‘frigerator, and God’s my witness!” Newspaper reporters always fall for this crap. Always. Everywhere.)

Anyhow, media. This is where you need to place large, costly, frequent ads in the local newspaper. And start your own website.

You’ve got your facts, your figures, your data. What you don’t have is civil disobedience. Till you do, your facts, including your Wind Turbine Syndrome facts, are valueless. Remember M.L. King. He knew his facts (Jesus, he even had the law on this side!) were worthless until he began marching and picketing and getting in their face.

Whether you call it civil disobedience or direct action, I suggest that before you begin, check with your local police department and find out the local regulations on peaceful demonstration. (Matters like not blocking public access, not blocking automobile traffic, etc.) If you need a permit, get one. Police and the courts are not your enemy. Police, the law, and the courts are not the issue; the issue is demonstrating to lawmakers that your evidence and your plight must be taken seriously.

Second, when elections come round in November, it is essential you run anti-Wind candidates for town board, county legislature, state senator, etc. But mostly town board. Work within the electoral process: it works! To elect these people means you’re going to have to do a lot of leg work and advertising. Lots of door to door. Pamphlets. Leaflets. Public meetings to meet the candidates. It works.

Many people seem to think the Big Wind Onslaught doesn’t call for such measures. People are being driven from their homes, and made ill besides — and they don’t seem to think these measures are appropriate. They write letters to bureaucrats. They speak politely at town meetings where the Wind Mafia are “presenting.” These thugs need to be shouted down. These meetings need to be legally obstructed to the point where they can’t function.

Best of all — ready for this? — get arrested. Before TV cameras: arrested. Hundreds of you. Old ladies, ministers, college professors and deans, doctors. Arrested. Little kids too. Then, watch to see how the county commissioners and the conniving lawyers — watch how they come around. It’s miraculous how they change.

Big Wind is being given a free pass to destroy communities and lives and homes and health. Pretend these assholes are Martians, with little antennae and a Mother Ship parked somewhere, and they’re taking over your community. (When you survey an operating windplant, the analogy is not far fetched.) What would you do then? Still discuss the matter politely with your county commissioners and health commissioner and department of environmental conservation and town board? Still “follow the usual channels”?

Hell no! You’d take to the barricades and the streets and shout to these commissioners, “Hey, wake up! We’ve been invaded!”

My apologies for being cranky. I’ve been playing games with wind bullshit for too many years. I’ve seen too many sheep led to the slaughter. Sheep now have to take up the instruments of civil disobedience. Otherwise sheep is toast. (Mixing metaphors again.)

One last time: What doesn’t work in this mass movement (which I’ve outlined above in caricature) is polite discourse. Nor do letters to politicians berating them for not doing “their job.” Their job! Their job? Their job, dear reader, is to promote big business and big ideas and panaceas. That’s their job. To think otherwise is naïve.

Politicians hate (make that HATE) public demonstrations. Nothing worse. They hate marches and banners and slogans and placards and picketing. The television crew arrives with cameras rolling, the klieg lights suddenly switch on, and the town board, minister of the environment, county commissioner, state senator — writhe.

Consider Barbara Ashbee’s home. It’s worthless. Toxic. She’s a realtor; she knows better than I that she could not give away her home. Nor can she bear to live in it. She’s now in the horrible world of the d’Entremonts: Abandonment.

Abandon your home: that’s really the only option for many people, isn’t it? Or get bought out by the so-called developer. (Isn’t there a more appropriate name for people who do this to you?)

Big Wind picks you off, one township at a time. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

So, what have you got left? You’ve got your pen, you’ve got your voice, your wits, and your anger. Use them effectively.

Calvin Luther Martin

Ph.D. (History) 1974 University of California, Santa Barbara

Author, Keepers of the Game: Indian-Animal Relationships and the Fur Trade (California 1978). Winner of the American Historical Association’s Albert J. Beveridge Award 1979 for the “best book of the year in American History.” Subject of Shepard Krech, ed., Indians, Animals, and the Fur Trade: A Critique of Keepers of the Game (Georgia 1981).

Editor, The American Indian and the Problem of History (Oxford 1987)

Author, In the Spirit of the Earth: Rethinking History and Time (Johns Hopkins 1992)

Author, The Way of the Human Being (Yale 1999). Winner of the Westchester County Library System’s Anne Izard Storyteller’s Choice Award 2000. See Calvin Luther Martin, Insanin Yolu, Turkish trans. by Ayse Sirin Okyayuz Yener (Phoenix 2002).

Author, The Language of Wildness (Yale, probably. Slowly forthcoming)

Hartwick College, assistant professor 1974

Rutgers University, assistant professor 1975, associate professor (with tenure) 1978

Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada), visiting professor 1978

Dartmouth College, visiting professor summer 1983

Alaska (Native) Moravian Seminary (Bethel, Alaska), visiting professor 1995-1996

Hartwick College, Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Humanities, 2000-2003

Newberry Library Center for the History of the American Indian 9/73-6/74

Henry E. Huntington Library, summer 1976

Henry E. Huntington Library, June 1980

National Endowment for the Humanities, July and August 1980

National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship 7/81-6/82

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship 7/82-6/83

American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship 7/86-6/87

http://www.aweo.org/Martin.html

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Open Letter from Carmen Krogh, Re: Health Canada Presentation at Wind Turbine Noise Conferences

May 14, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper

Prime Minister of Canada

pm@pm.gc.ca

The Honourable Rona Ambrose

Minister of Health, Health Canada

minister_ministre@hc-sc.gc.ca

M.P. Ben Lobb

Chair

House of Commons Standing Committee on Health

ben.lobb.a2@parl.gc.ca

May 14, 2015

Dear Prime Minister Harper, Hon. Minister of Health, and MP Ben Lobb,

Re: Open Letter: Health Canada Presentation at Wind Turbine Noise Conferences

The purpose of this letter is that in the interests of openness and transparency, any additional results of the Health Canada Wind Turbine Noise and Health Study: Summary of Results be publicly disclosed.

Attached is a copy of the schedule relating to David Michaud, Principal Investigator of the Health Canada Study’s presentation entitled Wind Turbine Noise and Health Study: Summary of Results.[1]

The presentation took place Tuesday, April 21, 2015 during a Wind Turbine Noise Conference held in Scotland.[2]

I am aware that David Michaud will be presenting this paper during the Acoustical Society of America meeting scheduled Thursday, May 21, 2015.[3]

The paper being presented informs new information.

In addition, I am aware a copy of the paper was available during a recent Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal.[4]

To ensure openness and transparency I respectfully urged on two occasions that the Health Canada plenary session, the Wind Turbine Noise and Health Study: Summary of Results be publicly disclosed prior to its presentation.[5],[6]

Typically, Conference registrants receive a copy; however with respect to public disclosure, I have searched Health Canada’s and other websites and am unable to locate a link to the paper presented. It is possible the link is not easily located. If the paper and media release are available publicly, please direct me to the links and advise me of the date of the postings.

Based on previous participation in several Wind Turbine Noise Conferences[7],[8] the final papers disclose the contents of a presentation. Since the paper presented by David Michaud should have conformed to requirements for submitting the paper by January 31, 2015,[9] it is expected that members of the planning committee would have had the opportunity to be informed of its contents. I note that David Michaud is a member of the Scotland Conference planning committee.

The Health Canada Study is a 2.1 million dollar publicly funded study. An issue in Ontario and other venues is that those reporting adverse health effects have not been given the opportunity to participate on various initiatives such as the Health Canada Study team and the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) assessment. Affected neighbours, despite their appeals to the various government authorities feel they have been set aside and ignored. Industry and government is represented but not those affected.

To ensure openness and transparency I respectfully urge that the paper presented by Health Canada during the Conference be publicly disclosed.

Thank you for your consideration of this matter.

Respectfully submitted,

Carmen Krogh, BScPharm

Cell 613 312 9663

Attachments

Open Letter_Health Canada transparency and disclosure May 14 2015.pdf

Tuesday.pdf

References

[1] Wind Turbine Noise (2015), Monday 20th April to Thursday 23^rd, April 2015, Glasgow, Scotland http://windturbinenoise.eu/

[2] Michaud D, PLENARY, Health Effects and Annoyance ,Wind Turbine Noise and Health Study: Summary of Results, Tuesday, April 21, 2015, http://windturbinenoise.eu/?page_id=973

[3] Acoustical Society of America, May 18 to 21, 2015, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Spring 2015 Meeting

Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown Hotel, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

[4] Dingeldein v. Director, Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal, Case No. 15-011

[5] Correspondence to Prime Minister, Minister of Justice and Minister of Health March 18, 2015

[6] Correspondence to Prime Minister, Minister of Justice and Minister of Health April 4, 2015

[7] Trading off human health: Wind turbine noise and government policy Carmen ME Krogh, Joan Morris, Murray May, George Papadopoulos, Brett Horner, Paper presented at the Wind Turbine Noise conference 2013, August 28 to 30, Denver, Colorado, USA

[8] Carmen ME Krogh, Roy D Jeffery, Jeff Aramini, Brett Horner, Wind turbines can harm humans: a case study, Paper presented at Inter-noise 2012, New York City, NY

[9] Wind Turbine Noise 2015, Deadlines, Final Papers, January 31, 2015 http://windturbinenoise.eu/?page_id=363

Wendy-Heiger-Bernays PhD talks About Sleep Disruption, from Wind Turbine Noise.

May 14, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Wendy Heiger-Bernays PhD- Falmouth Wind Turbine Sleep Disruption

Massachusetts

Wendy Heiger-Bernays PhD of Boston University School of Public Health explained that “it is possible that living too close to wind turbines can cause annoyance and sleep disruption, but we don’t have measurements that can show levels that disrupt sleep.”

She agreed that sleep disruption can bring on a whole host of adverse health impacts.”

http://www.safesetbacks.com/page4/styled-23/page82.html

MA DEP/DPH Expert-Falmouth Wind Turbines “are too close”

Falmouth, MA – Last Wednesday eight Falmouth wind turbine neighbors traveled to Waltham to hear three Department of Environmental Protection [DEP] / Department of Public Health [DPH] expert health panel members present their Wind Turbine Health Impact Study report. That document, released only two weeks ago, caused great controversy not only in Falmouth but also across the Commonwealth. … [panel member] Wendy Heiger-Bernays PhD of Boston University School of Public Health explained that “it is possible that living too close to wind turbines can cause annoyance and sleep disruption, but we don’t have measurements that can show levels that disrupt sleep.” She agreed that sleep disruption can bring on a whole host of adverse health impacts.”

Dr. Heiger-Bernays is to be commended for her statements. It is a step in the right direction and acknowledges what the neighbors in Falmouth know. Sleep is being disturbed. Yet there is much more to be acknowledged which has nothing to do with sleep deprivation.

It is unfortunate that the Expert Panel was unable to acknowledge in their report a most compelling fact presented in the case-study Bruce McPherson Study reports [1,2]. From [2],

“The investigators were surprised to experience the same adverse health symptoms described by neighbors living at this house and near other large industrial wind turbine sites. The onset of adverse health effects was swift, within twenty minutes, and persisted for some time after leaving the study area. … This research revealed that persons without a pre-existing sleep deprivation condition, not tied to the location nor invested in the property, can experience within a few minutes the same debilitating health effects described and testified to by neighbors living near the wind turbines. The debilitating health effects were judged to be visceral (proceeding from instinct, not intellect) and related to as yet unidentified discordant physical inputs or stimulation to the vestibular system.”

I understand that what the investigators experienced in their case-study may inadvertently fall into a branch of analysis called “time-series”. Before they arrived at the study site, they felt fine. Soon after they arrived at the study site they soon felt debilitated. Later when they left the study site, they started to feel better. When they returned to continue work their health worsened. When the turbine stopped and they left, they started to feel better. It took some time for them to regain full health (days to weeks). The reports’ figures and tables illustrate the health changes experienced by the investigators with an unexpectedly clear correlation to wind turbine operations.

While the Bruce McPherson study was limited in time, the experiences of the two investigators will remain compelling.

The study confirms that large industrial wind turbines can produce real and adverse health impacts and suggests that this is due to acoustic pressure pulsations, not related to the audible frequency spectrum, by affecting the vestibular system especially at low ambient sound levels. The study results emphasize the need for epidemiological and laboratory research by medical health professionals and acousticians concerned with public health and well-being. This study underscores the need for more effective and precautionary setback distances for industrial wind turbines. It is especially important to include a margin of safety sufficient to prevent inaudible low-frequency wind turbine noise from being detected by the human vestibular system.

Sincerely,
Rob Rand, Member INCE

1. Peer-reviewed journal: Robert W. Rand, Stephen E. Ambrose, and Carmen M. E. Krogh, Occupational Health and Industrial Wind Turbines: A Case Study. Published online before print August 22, 2011, doi: 10.1177/0270467611417849, The Bulletin of Science Technology & Society, August 22, 2011.

2. Stephen Ambrose and Robert Rand, The Bruce McPherson Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise Study: Adverse Health Effects Produced By Large Industrial Wind Turbines Confirmed. December 14, 2011.

http://randacoustics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/The-Bruce-McPherson-ILFN-Study.pdf

In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the Truth, is a Revolutionary Act…. George Orwell

May 14, 2015 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

The numbers racket.

by Pointman

This is a debut article by Athelstan, a moniker long term readers of this blog may read through as they might recognise his fist. He goes by a few names but for me he’ll always be Sulla, one of my comrades in a campaign a number of years back – yeah, the Skeptocats!

You get fair warning now, it’ll probably offend a number of your sensitivities but that’s what a plurality of viewpoint is all about.

Pointman

—-<0>—

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” – George Orwell

It came to my attention recently, when I learnt of some quite astonishing statistics.

Just a few characters you understand but whence they denoted such a drastic alteration and which were mind-boggling. Discombobulated, I will ever remain, because there is no going back.

Absolute, there can be no rectification and it was all very deliberately done and in saying that, with a maleficent glee. Oh yes, they knew what they were doing, the problem is, like all insane schemes, the consequences will trigger a catastrophe.

You see, it cannot just be me, have you noticed how government’s love to clarion favourable statistics? Glory, when good news, nice events occur, like a heavy cavalry charge do the politicians clamour, battle and stampede to attach their names and political parties to propitious circumstance. Glad tidings, be they sporting victories or, in the UK – royal occasions and of course: good news statistics…. .

Conversely, when the figures do not suit [the politicians – TPTB] they are hidden, stowed or dripped out in piecemeal fashion. Furthermore, and by mixing incongruent or, shoving in unnecessary comparisons, graphs, alignment, using all sorts of creative accountancy and jiggery-pokery, the effects of pure statistics are blunted to dampen their immediate impact. Clever it all is, some would say it’s too bloody clever by half.

Clever or machination?

For the world is full of experts. Colleges, universities pump ’em out and God knows kids with totally useless degrees in psychology and social studies, joint degrees with sports-economics become instant experts pontificating on all manner of stuff which is way above their intellectual capacity to fully comprehend. Ah but no one ever really challenges these ‘experts’ because we live in a ‘virtual’ world which revolves only because of BS blurb. All of which is begging the question, before – what did we ever do without all the consultants and spin doctors? Well I’m pretty sure that the world kept turning.

We all live in a world and whether you like it or not, people, everybody is bombarded by a blizzard of useless information. A plethora of numbers, words and electronic noise, which is interpreted for us in the media, by politicians and by experts who in all truth don’t know Jack about the price, quality or length of a piece of string. Though, it is hard to divine sometimes just who if anybody is actually listening, for sure the UK youth either they are incapable [probably] or, too involved in other pursuits [weren’t we all] to blumin well care.

So, people half listen, are oblivious, careless and anyway, “they never tell us the truth”, well – indeed they won’t and don’t dare to and just don’t and we are led a merry dance to a tune no one recognizes but the music is incessant and the title is, “UNIVERSAL DECEIT”.

On a theme and in continuation.

“Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” – George Orwell.

Now, I cannot resist the urge to run you by some three rather egregious examples which are the very transubstantiation of man-made lies made manifest.

Readers of this ere blog may care to remind me of the great global warming swindleand here I shall not tarry for too long with it. Though, sufficed to say this great fraud is bleeding the western taxpayer and economies dry, it makes €$£billionaires for a few and causes misery for billions and guess what? Yessiree! it’s all based on a few very dodgy statistics and some fearful tampering of the temperature record, though it’s true, as scams go even the scum who ran Ponzi Enron and Bernie Madoff would be impressed.

Next, qualitative easing (QE) or put another way ‘printing money’ is another. Surely, as lies, damned lies and statistics go, QE is right up there and makes lots of money for those who can take advantage and for those who haven’t by diluting, actually debasing would be a better descriptor of the currency, it just makes you poorer, ask the chancellor of the Exchequer one called George Osborne……. silly me! Because, not even George understands it [no surprise there then].

Figures, deceits and liars. For global warming all of it, is based on dodgy stats, with QE except creating asset bubbles nobody really knows what it’s true effects are. With my final example – because the figures are explosive they are very much kept under wraps.

Time was, and here I am particularly referring to the UK and wherever you may live, I would deem that you may see a slight mirror but maybe not as far gone as Britain. Time was when you could more or less rely on your local bank manager, your headmaster, the town hall clerk, the policeman and even politicians, local was best because you used to meet them day in and day out.

These days, with Banking done in Bangalore, the police have retreated from the streets, town halls are glass fronted Lubyankas and with even less chance than the FSB-KGB of answering a FOI. Politicians answer, in descending order from at the top; supranational bodies – the UN, Brussels – the EU, political party, the executive, not even on the list are, “we the people”. Things, edicts, diktats are sent down from on high and our “we the people” job is to simply obey, there is no choice only the choice set before you and by all the Gods – will ye sup and eat it.

So, we come to the final set of numbers, ere the census was sent out in the early part of the decade and by six months later all of the collated data was made freely available to all those who were interested – which in times past was not very many.

Britain, was a nation of 48 million souls just after WWII and until the late Seventies Britain’s population had changed little since the baby boom of the Fifties and early Sixties, set at circa 55 million and which was a stable and pretty homogenous indigenous populace, those of differing skin tones numbered less than 1 million and all were fairly well assimilated into British language and culture, if not traditions, we all happily jostled and got along.

Throughout the next decade things began to change, in the Eighties, immigration was rising by about 50,000/yr. Coming apart it was and then in 1997 Blair, Straw, Brown and his social engineers began their work in earnest.

In 2014, last year the official figures show 583,000 came to our shores and this figure is undoubtedly an underestimate, for even the authorities believe 583,000 to be more like 783,000 ie, two hundred thousand shy of official ‘guestimates’.

Though the authorities keep schtumm, it is a commonly known piece of information, the much championed process, a new system called E-borders was supposed to be rolled out in 2011/12 but it was shelved because TPTB did not want us [the British public] knowing the true extent of the figures.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS), has not released the fully collated 2011 census and patently the figures now are in any direction you wend – bigger, further and faster. Anecdotal evidence, it cannot be belied and any naturalized Aussie or Kiwi who used to live here will attest to, the demographic change this country is undergoing, simply put – stupefies.

For according to the 2011 UK census figures, 8,750,000 Asians [read subcontinent] now call Britain home and add in to that, 3,750,000 who identified themselves as Black or mixed race. In order, 14% and 6% added together gives you one in five, if you throw in the EU contingent 2.5 million and if you stretch the stats – foreigners account for ± 1 in 4 of the UK population.

I think back to the awful days of the Balkans civil wars and think on an oft used, if only a short phrase which conjured up a dystopian blackness and horror evocative of the Nazis. Though in south-eastern Europe, it did seem, not only a world away but an inconceivable, an impossible occurence for it to arrive on these shores, in dear old Blighty.

A final thought, you may remember the term, ‘ethnic cleansing’.

Australia’s “Melissa Ware”, Attacks the Ignorance, Surrounding the Effects of Infrasound!

May 14, 2015May 14, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Pac Hydro Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm Victim – Melissa Ware – Attacks Infrasound Ignorance

May 14, 2015 by stopthesethings

****

Melissa Ware is one of the long-suffering victims of Pac Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater disaster.

No sooner had Melissa given Labor-in-Liberal clothing Federal MP, Disappointing Dan Tehan a solid whack – for his wind industry backed plea to salvage the completely unsustainable Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target – (see our post here), than she was back lining up another, ignoramus with this cracking letter to the Ballarat Courier.

Ill-informed opinions build on wind farm ignorance
The Courier
By Melissa Ware
5 May 2015

SENATORS and public servants, please listen to the doctors and [not] Ms Hawkins’ ill informed knowledge on wind farm health issues, and publicly remedy the ignorance without delay.

For those failing to understand simple physics and dynamics of wind turbines and resulting impacts of noise, vibration and sensation to human and animal health then you can surely understand IWEF ‘noise’ is not always ‘heard’ by the ear but by the brain. Vibrations from turbines that ripple through the ground and air, through our homes and bodies, [are] not always consciously ‘felt’, [but] are detected.

These turbine emitted noise and vibrations and sensations are torturous to many, not only in south west Victoria but around the world.

Educate yourself with some facts and figures about impacts, read Mr Cooper’s recent findings and summary of the Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm, read the submissions into the senate inquiry into wind farms: or if you can’t manage to recognise what you allow to occur in your backyard, try some empathy. Adapt.

Recognise wind farm health issues being cruelly scorned or dismissed has only one purpose, and it is not to promote good public health or well-being.

Science is purely based on a theory which is founded on fact. When new information or facts are provided then the theory is supposed to adapt accordingly.

Harmed rural people like myself tell scientists, acousticians and the medicos we are getting sick and sicker near turbines and many adversely impacted residents are prepared to assist in learning why and how we are getting sick. We are willing to open our homes and share our experiences, what we don’t need from Ms Hawkins is an accusation there is a dubious sounding, completely unbelievable ‘health scare’ campaign being undertaken by Senator Madigan.

Wind energy [is] an illusion, is illustrated and promoted as clean and safe as expected from a huge business raking in huge sums of taxpayer funding through the RECs. It is gullible believing the surface story investigate, read up on some facts or live 900m from a wind farm for six years and experience first hand the oil leaks, the chemicals, the cement, the cost, the never ending maintenance, the bombardment and the cruelty, and the utter uselessness of wind energy.

Rural people [are] forced through the inaction of the AMA and the NHMRC, and inadequate planning laws, to endure impacting emissions of wind turbines and are being prescribed the only recommendation available by GPs, and that is to ‘move away’.

Imagine, if you are able, what your response would be to the imposition of a wind farm built next door, which damages your health, which the company and the government refuse to acknowledge and you are told for your health to move away.

You can’t sell because no-one will live by choice in close proximity to these monstrosities. Senator Madigan is not the only one doing a great job in having our voices heard in parliament and seeing that this marginalisation of rural people, including my family, being adversely impacted is recognised.
Melissa Ware
Cape Bridgewater

Melissa is on very solid scientific ground, when she talks about the known, and well-established, relationship between incessant, turbine generated low-frequency and infrasound and adverse health consequences, for those constantly exposed to it.

The wind industry have known about it for over 30 years; and, in all of that time, have done precisely what you’d expect from people without a shred of empathy or human decency – they lied through their back teeth and covered it up:

Three Decades of Wind Industry Deception: A Chronology of a Global Conspiracy of Silence and Subterfuge

Among Non-Biased, Informed Scientists, there is No 97% Consensus. That was a “Con”.

May 13, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

The con in consensus: Climate change consensus among the misinformed is not worth much

Ross McKitrick, Special to Financial Post | May 11, 2015

Ross McKitrick: Lots of people get called “climate experts” and contribute to the appearance of consensus, without necessarily being knowledgeable about core issues. A consensus among the misinformed is not worth much.

AP Photo/Jim Cole, FileRoss McKitrick: Lots of people get called “climate experts” and contribute to the appearance of consensus, without necessarily being knowledgeable about core issues. A consensus among the misinformed is not worth much.

Not only is there no 97 per cent consensus among climate scientists; many misunderstand core issues

In the lead-up to the Paris climate summit, massive activist pressure is on all governments, especially Canada’s, to fall in line with the global warming agenda and accept emission targets that could seriously harm our economy. One of the most powerful rhetorical weapons being deployed is the claim that 97 per cent of the world’s scientists agree what the problem is and what we have to do about it. In the face of such near-unanimity, it would be understandable if Prime Minister Harper and the Canadian government were simply to capitulate and throw Canada’s economy under the climate change bandwagon. But it would be a tragedy because the 97 per cent claim is a fabrication.

Like so much else in the climate change debate, one needs to check the numbers. First of all, on what exactly are 97 per cent of experts supposed to agree? In 2013 President Obama sent out a tweet claiming 97 per cent of climate experts believe global warming is “real, man-made and dangerous.” As it turns out the survey he was referring to didn’t ask that question, so he was basically making it up. At a recent debate in New Orleans I heard climate activist Bill McKibben claim there was a consensus that greenhouse gases are “a grave danger.” But when challenged for the source of his claim, he promptly withdrew it.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserts the conclusion that most (more than 50 per cent) of the post-1950 global warming is due to human activity, chiefly greenhouse gas emissions and land use change. But it does not survey its own contributors, let alone anyone else, so we do not know how many experts agree with it. And the statement, even if true, does not imply that we face a crisis requiring massive restructuring of the worldwide economy. In fact it is consistent with the view that the benefits of fossil fuel use greatly outweigh the climate-related costs.

One commonly-cited survey asked if carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and human activities contribute to climate change. But these are trivial statements that even many IPCC skeptics agree with. And again, both statements are consistent with the view that climate change is harmless. So there are no policy implications of such surveys, regardless of the level of agreement.

More than half acknowledge that their profession is split on the issue

The most highly-cited paper supposedly found 97 per cent of published scientific studies support man-made global warming. But in addition to poor survey methodology, that tabulation is often misrepresented. Most papers (66 per cent) actually took no position. Of the remaining 34 per cent, 33 per cent supported at least a weak human contribution to global warming. So divide 33 by 34 and you get 97 per cent, but this is unremarkable since the 33 per cent includes many papers that critique key elements of the IPCC position.

Two recent surveys shed more light on what atmospheric scientists actually think. Bear in mind that on a topic as complex as climate change, a survey is hardly a reliable guide to scientific truth, but if you want to know how many people agree with your view, a survey is the only way to find out.

In 2012 the American Meteorological Society (AMS) surveyed its 7,000 members, receiving 1,862 responses. Of those, only 52 per cent said they think global warming over the 20th century has happened and is mostly manmade (the IPCC position). The remaining 48 per cent either think it happened but natural causes explain at least half of it, or it didn’t happen, or they don’t know. Furthermore, 53 per cent agree that there is conflict among AMS members on the question.

So no sign of a 97 per cent consensus. Not only do about half reject the IPCC conclusion, more than half acknowledge that their profession is split on the issue.

The Netherlands Environmental Agency recently published a survey of international climate experts. 6550 questionnaires were sent out, and 1868 responses were received, a similar sample and response rate to the AMS survey. In this case the questions referred only to the post-1950 period. 66 per cent agreed with the IPCC that global warming has happened and humans are mostly responsible. The rest either don’t know or think human influence was not dominant. So again, no 97 per cent consensus behind the IPCC.

But the Dutch survey is even more interesting because of the questions it raises about the level of knowledge of the respondents. Although all were described as “climate experts,” a large fraction only work in connected fields such as policy analysis, health and engineering, and may not follow the primary physical science literature.

But in addition to poor survey methodology, that tabulation is often misrepresented

Regarding the recent slowdown in warming, here is what the IPCC said: “The observed global mean surface temperature (GMST) has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years.” Yet 46 per cent of the Dutch survey respondents – nearly half – believe the warming trend has stayed the same or increased. And only 25 per cent agreed that global warming has been less than projected over the past 15 to 20 years, even though the IPCC reported that 111 out of 114 model projections overestimated warming since 1998.

Three quarters of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement “Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted.” Here is what the IPCC said in its 2003 report: “In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

Looking into further detail there are other interesting ways in which the so-called experts are unaware of unresolved discrepancies between models and observations regarding issues like warming in the tropical troposphere and overall climate sensitivity.

What can we take away from all this? First, lots of people get called “climate experts” and contribute to the appearance of consensus, without necessarily being knowledgeable about core issues. A consensus among the misinformed is not worth much.

Second, it is obvious that the “97 per cent” mantra is untrue. The underlying issues are so complex it is ludicrous to expect unanimity. The near 50/50 split among AMS members on the role of greenhouse gases is a much more accurate picture of the situation. The phony claim of 97 per cent consensus is mere political rhetoric aimed at stifling debate and intimidating people into silence.

The Canadian government has the unenviable task of defending the interest of the energy producers and consumers of a cold, thinly-populated country, in the face of furious, deafening global warming alarmism. Some of the worst of it is now emanating from the highest places. Barack Obama’s website (barackobama.com) says “97 per cent of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and man-made…Find the deniers near you — and call them out today.” How nice. But what we really need to call out is the use of false propaganda and demagoguery to derail factual debate and careful consideration of all facets of the most complex scientific and policy issue of our time.

Ross McKitrick is a professor of economics at the University of Guelph, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute.

Whenever they Do a “Study” on Wind Turbine Emissions, It is Never Done Properly! Science Ignored!

May 13, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Massachusetts Wind Turbine Health Impact Study- Fraud, Hoax Sham,

http://patch.com/massachusetts/falmouth/bogus-mass-wind-turbine-noise-study-2012-update-0

Jeffrey M. Ellenbogen, MD; MMSc
Assistant Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School Division Chief, Sleep Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital

Sheryl Grace, PhD; MS Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University

Wendy J Heiger-Bernays, PhD
Associate Professor of Environmental Health, Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health
Chair, Lexington Board of Health

James F. Manwell, PhD Mechanical Engineering;
MS Electrical & Computer Engineering; BA Biophysics
Professor and Director of the Wind Energy Center, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Dora Anne Mills, MD, MPH, FAAP
State Health Officer, Maine 1996–2011
Vice President for Clinical Affairs, University of New England

Kimberly A. Sullivan, PhD
Research Assistant Professor of Environmental Health, Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health

Marc G. Weisskopf, ScD Epidemiology; PhD Neuroscience
Associate Professor of Environmental Health and Epidemiology Department of Environmental Health & Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health

Facilitative Support provided by Susan L. Santos, PhD, FOCUS GROUP Risk Communication and Environmental Management Consultants

Bogus Mass Wind Turbine Noise Study 2012 Update
Counter Points To The 2012 Massachusetts Wind Turbine Noise Study -110 Decibels Equal To A Loud Out Door Rock Band

Share CommentsBogus Mass Wind Turbine Noise Study 2012 Update

Bogus Mass Wind Turbine Noise Study 2012 Updated –May 2015

Counter Points To The Massachusetts Wind Turbine Noise Study. This study was done in 2012

Not One Victim Was Ever Interviewed or Examined

– Massachusetts has not installed a megawatt wind turbine since 2013.

First it has been found the Town of Falmouth had known three years prior to the Massachusetts DEP 2012 noise report in 2009 that the turbines being installed would produce noise levels over 110 Decibels of noise equivalent to a loud outdoor rock band .

The August 3, 2010 noise letter from Vestas wind company is at the link :
http://www.windaction.org/posts/41357-vestas-raises-concerns-about-turbine-noise-letter#.VVJlVflVikp
Since the installation of the Falmouth wind turbines the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has admitted the turbines were placed “Ad Hoc” and now looks at setbacks over 2000 feet and has changed their noise testing procedures.

Counter Points To The Massachusetts Wind Turbine Noise Study In Which Not One Victim Was Ever Interviewed or Examined

What the Study Says: On page 1: “…It should be noted that the scope of the Panel’s effort was focused on wind turbines and is not meant to be a comparative analysis of the relative merits of wind energy vs. non-renewable fossil fuel sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas.”

However: The second paragraph of Chapter 1 of the study discusses a significant decrease in the consumption of conventional fuels and a corresponding decrease in the production of carbon dioxide and nitrogen and sulfur oxides.

The second paragraph states that reductions in the production of these pollutants will have demonstrable and positive benefits on human and environmental health

Appendix A has a 28 page summary on the origin of wind energy, the mechanics and operation of wind turbines, and the reduction of emissions if more turbines were providing energy (Section 12 is titled“Wind Turbines and Avoided Pollutants”)

On page 1: “The overall context for this study is that the use of wind turbines results in positive effects on public health and environmental health…local impacts of wind turbines, whether anticipated or demonstrated, have resulted in fewer turbines being installed than might otherwise have been expected. To the extent that these impacts can be ameliorated, it should be possible to take advantage of the indigenous wind energy resource more effectively.”

This passage indicates the true purpose of the Massachusetts study—to create an expansion of the wind industry through a slanted interpretation of wind health study documents.

The Panel merely reviewed literature and public media sources and met only three times.

Stated that sleep disruption is the most commonly reported complaint by people and discusses this primarily as a result of “unwanted sound” and audible, amplitudemodulated noise (“whooshing”)

Writes off most self-reported “annoyance” as a combination of sound, sight of the turbine, and attitude towards the wind project (ES-5)

Therefore, according to the Panel, because they “found” no negative health effects to humans as a result of their literature research, it must necessarily follow that there are positive health effects.

Yet, these positive health effects are not the result of wind turbines being safe, but that the turbines’ “green” impact on the environment will result in a decrease of conventional sources of fuel.

This endorsement of safety is an admission that the Panel failed to strictly adhere to the scope of their charge.

Expert “Independent” Panel Members:Dr. James F. Manwell and Dora Anne Mills are extreme pro-wind advocates:

Manwell oversaw the first utility scale wind turbine and the largest wind turbine constructed in Massachusetts

Manwell has won several awards from American Wind Association and U.S. Department of Energy Mills has provided public testimony and “op-ed” newspaper pieces supporting wind turbines while a member of the Commission and before the findings were released Posted information on Maine’s CDC website as Maine’s public health director that wind turbines do not have negative health effects in 2009

Page 2 of the study states that 5 of the panel members “did not have any direct experience with wind turbines.”

While the other members had backgrounds in epidemiology, toxicology , neurology, and sleep medicine, they had no past direct experience with wind turbines

Massachusetts Study Cites Sources that Contain Information that Wind Turbines Cause Negative Health Effects:

The Panel used several articles by the same authors of other studies that Senator Lasee provided to the PSC

The Panel used several articles that Senator Lasee provided to the PSC that found that infrasound from wind turbines can have negative health effects, yet the Massachusetts panel comes to different conclusions than the study authors: Ambrose, S.E. & Rand R. W., (2011, December).

The Bruce McPherson Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise Study: Adverse Health Effects Produced By Large Industrial Wind Turbines Confirmed.

http://randacoustics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/The-Bruce-McPherson-ILFN- Study.pdf
http://docs.wind-watch.org/Infrasound-Measurements-Falmouth-Wind-Turbines-NCE.pdf

http://legis.wisconsin.gov/eupdates/sen01/Massachusetts%20Wind%20Turbine%20Health%20Impact%20Study%20Talking%20Points.pdf

Infrasound Measurements of Falmouth Wind Turbines Wind #1 and Wind #2NoiseControl Engineering, LLC (NCE) – February 27, 2015 Impact on People Noise Massachusetts
This important study conducted at a home situated within 1300 feet of the Falmouth MA wind turbines identified infrasonic sound pressure levels inside the residence. These results are similar to results from other international researchers with references given in the report.
http://www.windaction.org/posts/42443-infrasound-measurements-of-falmouth-wind-turbines-wind-1-and-wind-2#.VVJmU_lViko

Bogus Mass Wind Turbine Noise Study 2012 Update

patch.com

Counter Points To The 2012 Massachusetts Wind Turbine Noise Study -110 Decibels Equal To A Loud Out Door Rock Band

Add One More “FAIL”, to the Wind Industry’s Ever Growing List! FOREST FIRE RISKS!

May 13, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Forest fires and wind turbines: The danger no one is talking about

By Clyde MacDonald, Special to the BDN

Posted June 29, 2011, at 6:19 p.m.

Despite all that has been written about wind power, a vitally important issue has barely been mentioned. When turbines fail, blades may fall to the ground or send fragments that land up to a mile away. Turbines often catch fire, and when they do they often send flaming shards into fields and forests. Much has been said about the short-term jobs created in preparing turbine sites, but almost nothing about job losses from turbine-caused fires in our paper mills, sawmills and other forest-dependent industries.

Official information on the number and severity of turbine-induced forest fires remains largely secret and unavailable. Nonetheless, there are scattered media reports and one thorough description of the safety record of the Caithness USA Wind corporation with installations in the northwest. That one corporation experienced 110 serious wind turbine fires over a 20 year period, but there is no mention of whether some of those fires may have spread to adjacent areas.

Similarly, media references to 43 turbine fires, mostly in the U.S. and Europe, merely state “no details.” Many references do contain brief statements, such as that 22 fires were caused by lightning strikes, but again, no references to those fires spreading far from the sites. Only 25 of the reports mention that turbine fires had spread to fields and forests.

In California, one such fire burned 68 acres, another 220 acres, and in Palm Springs several “spot fires” had been generated in surrounding areas. In Hawaii, 95 acres were burned. Australia lost 80,000 acres of forests located mostly in a national park. Spain lost nearly 200 acres from one fire. A comment on a German fire mentioned that “burning debris” from a turbine had traveled several hundred meters from the site. In Holland, three burning blades from a mere 270-foot tower cast a 50-foot flaming shard 220 feet from the site.

The most dramatic report emanated from Wales where “great balls of fire” landed more than 150 yards away, causing a hillside to burn. Fearing more forest fires, an Australian province enacted a law banning placements of wind towers near wooded areas. Yet, in heavily forested Maine, all of our wind power sites have been approved without even considering that turbines have often caused forest fires.

It requires little imagination to foresee that 400-foot blazing turbines, located in the most heavily winded areas along steep mountain slopes, could easily shoot flaming debris into wooded areas.

Mere fire engines cannot douse turbine fires. In every report, firefighters had to allow the turbine fires to burn themselves out. All they could hope to do was prevent the fires from spreading to other areas. In Australia, California and Germany, massive firefighting equipment evidently came from nearby areas.

That 220-acre California fire had been contained by 45 firefighters, two helicopters and two bulldozers. The 69-acre fire was contained with the help of 15 fire engines, four hand crews and four planes. A 5-acre California fire was extinguished by six fire engines, three water trucks, two helicopters, two tanker planes, a bulldozer and three hand crews.

When Maine experiences turbine fires, one wonders what allowances have been made to buy, store, maintain and make use of such equipment. Where will the personnel and equipment be located? Who will pay for them? Has the Department of Environmental Protection and Land Use Regulation Commission required bonding or insurance policies that would cover the costs of forest losses and jobs in our woods-related industries?

We needed a moratorium that would have allowed us to study all questions related to the turbine-caused forest fire dangers, but the Maine Legislature recently rejected a moratorium proposal.

We may hope DEP and LURC will forgo further site approvals until these and other questions are answered satisfactorily. General Electric reportedly recently wrote to a potential wind developer that its newer turbines rarely catch fire, presumably unlike the older ones already in place. If true, should Maine’s agencies require the installation of GE turbines only?

Forest fires present another unanswered question and one more reason why our permitting agencies should forgo approving more wind turbine sites in Maine’s wooded areas for the remainder of this year.

Clyde MacDonald of Hampden was an aide to Sens. Edmund Muskie and George Mitchell.

http://bangordailynews.com/2011/06/29/opinion/forest-fires-and-wind…

Educated Consumers are the Wind Industry’s Worst Enemy! Knowledge is power!

May 13, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

America’s Worst Wind-Energy Project
Wind-energy proponents admit they need lots of spin to overwhelm the truly informed.

The more people know about the wind-energy business, the less they like it. And when it comes to lousy wind deals, General Electric’s Shepherds Flat project in northernOregon is a real stinker.

I’ll come back to the GE project momentarily. Before getting to that, please ponder that first sentence. It sounds like a claim made by an anti-renewable-energy campaigner. It’s not. Instead, that rather astounding admission was made by a communications strategist during a March 23 webinar sponsored by the American Council on Renewable Energy called “Speaking Out on Renewable Energy: Communications Strategies for the Renewable Energy Industry.”

During the webinar, Justin Rolfe-Redding, a doctoral student from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, discussed ways for wind-energy proponents to get their message out to the public.Rolfe-Redding said that polling data showed that “after reading arguments for and against wind, wind lost support.” He went on to say that concerns about wind energy’s cost and its effect on property values “crowded out climate change” among those surveyed.

The most astounding thing to come out of Rolfe-Redding’s mouth — and yes, I heard him say it myself — was this: “The things people are educated about are a real deficit for us.” After the briefings on the pros and cons of wind, said Rolfe-Redding, “enthusiasm decreased for wind. That’s a troubling finding.” The solution to these problems, said Rolfe-Redding, was to “weaken counterarguments” against wind as much as possible. He suggested using “inoculation theory” by telling people that “wind is a clean source, it provides jobs” and adding that “it’s an investment in the future.” He also said that proponents should weaken objections by “saying prices are coming down every day.”

It’s remarkable to see how similar the arguments being put forward by wind-energy proponents are to those that the Obama administration is using to justify its support of Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar company that got a $529 million loan guarantee from the federal government. But in some ways, the government support for the Shepherds Flat deal is worse than what happened with Solyndra.

The majority of the funding for the $1.9 billion, 845-megawatt Shepherds Flat wind project in Oregon is coming courtesy of federal taxpayers. And that largesse will provide a windfall for General Electric and its partners on the deal who include Google, Sumitomo, and Caithness Energy. Not only is the Energy Department giving GE and its partners a $1.06 billion loan guarantee, but as soon as GE’s 338 turbines start turning at Shepherds Flat, the Treasury Department will send the project developers a cash grant of $490 million.

The deal was so lucrative for the project developers that last October, some of Obama’s top advisers, including energy-policy czar Carol Browner and economic adviser Larry Summers, wrote a memo saying that the project’s backers had “little skin in the game” while the government would be providing “a significant subsidy (65+ percent).” The memo goes on to say that, while the project backers would only provide equity equal to about 11 percent of the total cost of the wind project, they would receive an “estimated return on equity of 30 percent.”

The memo continues, explaining that the carbon dioxide reductions associated with the project “would have to be valued at nearly $130 per ton for CO2 for the climate benefits to equal the subsidies.” The memo continues, saying that that per-ton cost is “more than 6 times the primary estimate used by the government in evaluating rules.”

The Obama administration’s loan guarantee for the now-bankrupt Solyndra has garnered lots of attention, but the Shepherds Flat deal is an even better example of corporate welfare. Several questions are immediately obvious:

First: Why, as Browner and Summers asked, is the federal government providing loan guarantees and subsidies for an energy project that could easily be financed by GE, which has a market capitalization of about $170 billion?

Second: Why is the Obama administration providing subsidies to GE, which paid little or no federal income taxes last year even though it generatedsome $5.1 billion in profits from its U.S. operations?

Third: How is it that GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, can be the head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness while his company is paying little or no federal income taxes? That question is particularly germane as the president never seems to tire of bashing the oil and gas industry for what he claims are the industry’s excessive tax breaks.

Over the past year, according to Yahoo! Finance, the average electric utility’s return on equity has been 7.1 percent. Thus, taxpayer money is helping GE and its partners earn more than four times the average return on equity in the electricity business.

A few months ago, I ran into Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy. I asked him why Duke — which has about 14,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation capacity — was investing in wind energy projects. The answer, said Rogers forthrightly, was simple: The subsidies available for wind projects allow Duke to earn returns on equity of 17 to 22 percent.

In other words, for all of the bragging by the wind-industry proponents about the rapid growth in wind-generation capacity, the main reason that capacity is growing is that companies such as GE and Duke are able to goose their profits by putting up turbines so they can collect subsidies from taxpayers.

There are other reasons to dislike the Shepherds Flat project: It’s being built in Oregon to supply electricity to customers in Southern California. That’s nothing new. According to the Energy Information Administration, “California imports more electricity from other states than any other state.” Heaven forbid that consumers in the Golden State would have to actually live near a power plant, refinery, or any other industrial facility. And by building the wind project in Oregon, electricity consumers inCalifornia are only adding to the electricity congestion problems that have been plaguing the region served by the Bonneville Power Authority. Earlier this year, the BPA was forced to curtail electricity generated by wind projects in the area because a near-record spring runoff had dramatically increased the amount of power generated by the BPA’s dams. In other words, Shepherds Flat is adding yet more wind turbines to a region that has been overwhelmed this year by excess electrical generation capacity from renewables. And that region will now have to spending huge sums of money building new transmission capacity to export its excess electricity.

Finally, there’s the question of the jobs being created by the new wind project. In 2009, when GE and Caithness announced the Shepherds Flat deal, CNN Money reported that the project would create 35 permanent jobs. And in an April 2011 press release issued by GE on the Shepherds Flat project, one of GE’s partners in the deal said they were pleased to be bringing “green energy jobs to our economy.”

How much will those “green energy” jobs cost? Well, if we ignore the value of the federal loan guarantee and only focus on the $490 million cash grant that will be given to GE and its partners when Shepherds Flat gets finished, the cost of those “green energy” jobs will be about $16.3 million each.

As Rolfe-Redding said, the more people know about the wind business, the less they like it.

— Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His latest book, Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, was recently issued in paperback.

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Open Letter from Carmen Krogh, Re: Health Canada Presentation at Wind Turbine Noise Conferences

Wendy-Heiger-Bernays PhD talks About Sleep Disruption, from Wind Turbine Noise.

In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the Truth, is a Revolutionary Act…. George Orwell

The numbers racket.

Australia’s “Melissa Ware”, Attacks the Ignorance, Surrounding the Effects of Infrasound!

Pac Hydro Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm Victim – Melissa Ware – Attacks Infrasound Ignorance

Among Non-Biased, Informed Scientists, there is No 97% Consensus. That was a “Con”.

The con in consensus: Climate change consensus among the misinformed is not worth much

What can we take away from all this? First, lots of people get called “climate experts” and contribute to the appearance of consensus, without necessarily being knowledgeable about core issues. A consensus among the misinformed is not worth much.

Whenever they Do a “Study” on Wind Turbine Emissions, It is Never Done Properly! Science Ignored!

Add One More “FAIL”, to the Wind Industry’s Ever Growing List! FOREST FIRE RISKS!

Forest fires and wind turbines: The danger no one is talking about

Educated Consumers are the Wind Industry’s Worst Enemy! Knowledge is power!